Rebinding a first edition, first printing set of The Lord of the Rings, by Rod Lang

As many of you may know, I am a bookbinder doing primarily restoration work. A couple of years ago, one of my clients asked me if I could rebind his first edition, first printing set of The Lord of the Rings into a leather binding? I replied that his idea looked like an interesting project and said "yes".

He sent me the 3 books along with the endpapers and headbands he wanted to use on the books and I would order the leather that had to be shipped from the UK.


The books as they arrived:





The first step was to strip the old cloth covers off and then with any corrective issues with the book boards.  The spines for each book had to be cleaned of their old material and new material applied.

The 3 books ready for the new leather covers:



The leather was measured for each book and then trimmed around the edges for the turn-ins when eventually put on the book.

The 3 new leather covers were sent out to have a custom gold stamped design on each book spine and then the covers were returned to me. The next step was to cover each book and to make sure the spine design was in alignment.


The leather and an example of the trimmed cover:




Lastly, the endpapers were pasted-in each book and "viola" the restoration was complete.

The endpapers:




And lastly, the finished books:



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